Midnight Mass Composers The Newton Brothers Rediscovered The Beauty Of Hymns [Interview]

For anyone raised Catholic, this show probably brings back memories, especially hearing those hymns. How was it working on those?

Andy: I was Catholic. Even Catholic college. I was Catholic the whole way for a long time, and Flanagan as well. We were very aware of all the things that I know you’re very aware of, too.

Taylor: As you know from the show, a lot of it was hymnal-based, and that came from the direction of Mike. He wanted to implement realism and authenticity. I studied up on Andy’s recommendations of different books and stuff. I did research, and of course, Andy could probably just recite it all in his sleep. Andy took the lead, actually, on that project, more than me, in the sense that he actually … I’ll let him tell you, but he flew up there and he spent four months being an actor [Grush plays the church organist in “Midnight Mass”], being a music director, going over to the hymns. And meanwhile, I was trying to do what I could to help out down here. And then when he came home, we started working on more of the background traditional score, per se.

Andy, so many musicians learn from performing in the church at a young age. Was that your experience?

Andy: I was playing at church. I don’t think I started playing at church until I was in the fifth or sixth grade. And strangely, piano was my first instrument, but I started with the guitar, because it seemed cooler at the time. A teacher that was at my school was also playing at church, so I played guitar with him. Around seventh and eighth grade, I started playing piano. It was pretty fun, because at the time, you’re not necessarily listening to and understanding what it is you’re doing; you’re just doing it. A lot of it was by repetition. There were many scenes where, during the consecration, when we were shooting “Midnight Mass,” I could recite all of those lines — as I’m sure, Jack, you probably can too, still. You just know how the mass goes.

Absolutely. It does not leave you.

Andy: Similarly with the music, too. The hymns were very familiar. Most of those hymns were chosen by Mike, and a few of them were our recommendation. “Come, Darkness” was a dark piece that I found by accident in high school, when I was trying to find something darker to perform in mass, because I thought it was cooler. No special reason. It was always the piece that I loved. When it ended up making it in the show, it worked really well. It’s funny, the hymns land on me a lot stronger now than they did as a child, or a teenager, or even in my early twenties. Even some of the lyrics landed on me in more of a way like, “Oh. That’s what this is about.” I knew a lot of these hymns by heart, but I don’t think I’d ever paid attention to, really, to what they were saying, which is terrible to say, but in the last two years, I’ve paid tons of attention. It’s brought deeper meaning to all of them, or brought a deeper meaning to me with all of them.

Some of those hymns can be perceived as beautiful or creepy. Given the tone of the show, and it technically being a horror show, how did it influence your interpretations?

Andy: I don’t know about you, but for me, I feel like we only sang enough lines to get whatever was happening in mass done. It was never like, “Let’s sing all seven verses of this song.” “Were You There,” that has some lyrics that are heavy. “Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?” I remember getting chills in the studio the first night I was piecing together that hymn, and figuring out how the arrangement would go, and just being moved by how real those lyrics were, regardless of my current faith or past faith. It’s more of the story that’s being told in that hymn. It’s pretty dark, even though the hymn is beautiful. I think it had a lot to do with the performance that we chose to put forth with that hymn. Both the instrumental performance, as well as the vocal performance.

Taylor: It’s funny, because the cool thing about that, too, is that we’re getting a lot of people reaching out to us who are very Catholic. We’ve had a minister reach out to us, just saying how much they loved the music, which is always a compliment, when you have both sides. You know what I mean? People who are atheists, and people who are very Catholic, or whatever religion they are. It’s always a compliment.